The IMOO Fest That Never Was

Thanks to everyone who came out for last weekend’s IMOO Fest. The official paid attendance was 35 on Friday and 52 on Saturday, with the latter likely representing an IMOO record. Although this was billed as the final edition of IMOO Fest I haven’t completely closed the door on doing more shows. I still hope to do something again next year but it will be a more modest event, perhaps on a similar scale as last year’s Spring Fling.

As IMOO nears its end I thought it would be fun to look back at the IMOO Fest that never was. Planning for the 2020 edition began in October 2019 when I met saxophonist Vinny Golia at Ann Arbor’s EdgeFest and he agreed to come to Ottawa the following year as our featured “artist in residence”. Guitarist Ava Mendoza became our second confirmed booking in December 2019. By mid-February 2020 the programming was complete, and by the first week of March even the website was complete. But then about a week later…something happened. I won’t bore you with the details (you probably heard about it – it made most of the papers for a few days) but the result was that there would be no more IMOO shows – or live music in general – for a very long time.

Here, then, was the complete program for the aborted IMOO Fest 2020:

Friday September 11th:

• Yolande Laroche
• Instant Places + Provisional Mailorder Double Duo
• Vinny Golia / Ava Mendoza / Mark Molnar / Bennett Bedoukian

Saturday September 12th:

• Tamayugé
• Vinny Golia / Anna Webber / Linsey Wellman
• EAVE (Erik Hove, Anna Webber, Vicky Mettler, Evan Tighe)
• Ava Mendoza Guitar Sextet (with Wayne Eagles, Norm Howard, David Jackson, Vicky Mettler, Alex Pelchat)

Sunday September 13th:

• Thisquietarmy
• New Language Collaborative featuring Daniel Carter
• IMOO Orchestra featuring Vinny Golia

If you attended IMOO Fest 2022 then you can see that there were several similarities with the planned 2020 event. The quartet EAVE was dormant by 2022, but saxophonists Erik Hove and Anna Webber brought another project in its place, and Eric Quach (Thisquietarmy) and Ellwood Epps (of NLC) each brought different projects to our 2022 Spring Fling. Ava Mendoza – and the concept of presenting an all-guitar ensemble – remain the ones that got away.